London

New York

Highland Spring

Purple Rain

Developing a branding and packaging design solution to relaunch Highland Spring's 'Still and Sparkling' water proposition.

inspiration

Thinking differently

It had been 3 years since Highland Spring last updated their packaging, and a lot had changed during that time. Our research revealed that consumers spend less than 10 seconds in the water aisle deciding on which brand to buy, being drawn to competitors’ packs with simpler, stronger colour definition.
Highland Spring had used their organic credentials to underpin the last redesign. With its watercolour tartan and hand-finished typography the design worked well up close, however to ramp up their in-store presence and stand out we had to think differently about our approach to the new pack design.

Raising the profile

Our core challenge was to position Highland Spring as the UK's leading supplier of bottled water – as well as, increasing value and volume sales, attracting new consumers and significantly raising Highland Spring's profile as a 'British' water, especially in London and SE England.

Ideas

A contemporary take

There were certain brand elements that we were able to tweak; the logo and tartan, for example. However, it became apparent that we needed something more dramatic to create standout. We shifted our focus to colour, exploring and supplementing the brand’s palette. The master logo was simplified to sit on white, making it more visible on shelf. We then developed a contemporary take on the brand’s tartan, reshaping it into a sweeping arc of colour. To reinforce the brand’s provenance, we introduced a simple graphic mountain range as a backdrop to reference the pure, natural source of the product.

Big numbers

7.2% brand sales increase

Base value sales jumped +£2.9m to £44m in 2012 – that’s +7.2% YoY and a very strong indicator of the health of the brand.

Volume sales increased +9.2%, that’s almost 3 times faster than the market rate (+3.3%) – resulting in a growing market share from 9.6% in 2010 and 10.0% in 2011 to 10.6% in 2012.

If you’d like to talk to us about repackaging your brand, we’d love to hear from you.